Veggieducken or Squaleekam?

Let me apologize: this stitching blog has turned into a weird food blog. One of these days I'll sit and stitch again. It will be grand.

At any rate, that crazy banana squash (from Nov. 13) was joined by sweet potatoes and leeks from the farm share last week, and how could we not make this silly-fun recipe? Here are my notes:

• The stuffing is yummy.
• The sweet potatoes need way longer in the microwave--two minutes did nothing for them. I'd nuke them for about 5-8 minutes.
• We cooked it for 1 hour and 20 minutes and it still wasn't really done. (We cut our pieces and put it back in for another half an hour.) (And we had to microwave the sweet potatoes to make them edible.)
• I would also do a little precooking of the leeks. They were really tough; I'd probably wrap them in damp towel and microwave for 5 minutes.

It was tasty, and it used up a lot of our vegetables, so definitely a win.

I also made the kartofellpuffer (German potato pancakes) for lunch from the list I compiled on Thanksgiving. They were tasty, but there is definitely something wrong with my veggie pancake skills because inevitably I leave the crunchy bits in the pan. I have tried cast iron, nonstick, and--what's the opposite of nonstick? stick?--stick pans and every time I lose the crust. Maybe it's my spatula? They were good served with a little leftover turkey heated up in leftover gravy. 

The only leftovers that are still leftover are one turkey leg and some stuffing.{Checking sale circulars for waffle iron...}

Farm Share Friday: Lacinato Kale Hearts

This week's farm share was full of ordinary vegetables. Normal stuff like carrots and Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes and butternut squash. The cauliflower was even white! (Last week it was green and the week before it was orange.) The kale hearts was the best I could do. What's different about this kale, you can't see in the bouquet photo. But don't worry, I've over-photographed this veg.

See the bottoms? How it looks like the heart of other leafy greens? Kale hearts.

Here's a not so secret secret. We don't even like kale. I'll never forget at our old farm share, overhearing a woman in the barn talking about how much her kids loooooooved kale chips. So the dude and I thought, "we'll try that, even kids like it." We chopped kale and spread the kale on a baking sheet, we oiled the kale and salted the kale. And then we threw away kale chips.

For a while I was using it in a chocolate-kale smoothie from Superfood Smoothies. It was okay but maybe a little gritty, what I really needed was one of those high performance blenders. But alas, even after I got one of those high performance blenders I realized the chocolate-kale smoothie was gross. So now kale is confined to stewed preparations. Two of our favorites are Chicken, Sweet Potato and Kale Soup (Skinny Taste) and Coconut Curried Kale and Sweet Potato (Cookie and Kate).

Continued Thanksgiving Preparations

I'm afraid stitching has taken a back seat to Thanksgiving preparations. Today I made a cheese ball. If you were going to make one, if you used this recipe yours would be very similar to mine. (I can't give you our actual recipe because it is my aunt's closely guarded secret, which is actually all over the internet.) (And frankly, I use way more blue cheese than even she calls for!)

Then I cracked open a box of Jiffy mix to make corn muffins. This is step one for Triple Corn Stuffing, out of the Black Family Reunion Cookbook. This stuffing is delicious and decadent, and I only eat it once a year.

BTW, we finally ate the little pumpkin from Farm Share Friday. We had the hazelnut, pumpkin, and feta salad. It was amazing! The dressing totally made it. Be sure to try it. (The pumpkin skin was edible, which was a surprise.) Also, the dude has seen the veggieducken recipe and now he is all gung-ho. If we thought we could get away with it, we'd serve it for Thanksgiving dinner. As it is, it's probably a project for Saturday. Stay tuned!

Thank you for your comments. They keep me going as I near the end of NaBloPoMo. And I am sorry that I still owe a few of you replies. I'll get there!

Turkey Day Countdown

Action shot of tonight's Thanksgiving related task: cranberry sauce.

I was also supposed to clean out the refrigerator but I had to work a little late and it threw off my schedule as well as my desire to do much besides sit on the couch.

I was motivated to work on the cranberries because 1) it takes 10 minutes and 2) I love cranberry sauce. (I hate gravy, but I am dedicated to the sauce.)

Home Preservation

Around Halloween, our neighbor was throwing out pears from his tree. He asked if we wanted any, and when we agreed he gave us two giant sacks full. (We foisted off one to our farm share friend.) Then everything went pear-shaped and we didn't get around to preserving them until this weekend. Fortunately, just enough were this side of rotten so we could make pear salsa. We used this recipe from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. (It's not that complete because we were looking for pear chutney, oh well.) The rest of the day was filled with bringing in the garden supplies/decor, grocery shopping, making an ill-informed trip to Home Goods for some holiday napkins, and finishing up the seasonal clothing switch. So, yeah, the pear salsa was the highlight of my day! (It's only eight more days. Hold out hope!)

Farm Share Friday: Fall is Squash Season

My friend Nicole is loving the farm share selfies which is totally keeping this goofiness alive.

The farm share told me that this is either a buttercup squash, a kikuza squash, or a Thelma Sanders squash. I needed to do some googling. I was kind of hoping for the Thelma Sanders squash because...what do you have to do to end up with squash named for you? (Well, probably just cross-breed it, right?) (It's an heirloom acorn squash, but I'm still not sure who Thelma Sanders is.) You can't tell but it doesn't have a pointy bottom like an acorn squash. And it's the wrong color for a buttercup.

That leaves us with the kikuza. (Although it does look like a miniature French Cinderella pumpkin.) Kikuza is a Japanese heirloom squash. The information I've been able to find about this squash indicates that it is nutty and sweet and dry. Some reports that it's also "spicy." It's good for baking and roasting.

I've found a few recipes for this. Pie, which you might expect, muffins, but I think what we'll try with this one is this savory roasted dish--pumpkin, roasted hazelnuts, and feta salad. (I know it says pumpkin, but trust me it was the kikuza search that got me there.) I'm running off to go stamping, so I'll have to tell you more about it later.

Farm Share Friday

When this giant thing came in the box, I knew I had to share it! This is the Guatemalan Blue squash, which is a type of banana squash. Yup, it's just that huge!

I decided to stuff it. It was going to take about two hours to cook with this recipe, so we'll eat it another night. I'll let you know how it is. But since many recipes for banana squash seem to suggest butternut squash as a substitute, I believe I know how it will taste.

If you have the energy, you can also conquer the veggieducken, which features the banana squash in a vegetarian version of the Frankenstinian turducken.

Farm Share Friday

Farm Share Friday, I just made that up right this second. NaBloPoMo makes me crazy like that. Oh sure, you'd probably like to see some "Friday Finishes." I'd oblige if I ever finished anything. Let's face it, that's not going to happen anytime soon, so for this month, I'll share some crazy thing from the farm share and what we did with it.

First up, kossak kohlrabi.Most people haven't even heard of regular kohlrabi, which is a brassica that my old CSA once described as looking like Sputnik (if that even has any meaning for anyone). It's a bulb that grows above ground and has leaves that shoot upward off long stems. Kossak kohlrabi is like kohlrabi on steroids.

Do you know how hard it is to photograph yourself
with a four pound kohlrabi in one hand?

Seriously, right? Kossak kohlrabi grows up to 8" in diameter and this particular one weighed four pounds. That's a lot of kohlrabi, right?

My go to kohlrabi recipe includes grating the kohlrabi, sauteing it in butter, stirring in an excessive amount of parmesan, (The original recipe called for 1/4 c but I didn't have my glasses on the first time I made it and went with 3/4 c, it was delish!) This dish highlights the nutty aspects of this crazy vegetable.

But we weren't going to be able to eat four pounds of that! So I googled and found this Iraqi lamb recipe. I substituted ground beef for the lamb cubes because that's what we had, and skipped the dried lime, because while I might like to try it in the future I didn't have any hiding in the cupboard. The dude loved it. And he's not that crazy about kohlrabi usually. Good thing because we still have the other half of the kohlrabi!

When I was cooking this, I remembered too that Amy Thielen (The New Midwestern Table and Food Network's Heartland Table) serves iced kohlrabi with salt as an appetizer. So I tried that. If you really salt it up, it's pretty good.

So there you go, three recipes for kohlrabi.

Winter Farm Share

Tonight's delivery of our winter farm share included red bok choy*, and it reminded me that one of my 93 blog post ideas is "share a recipe the kids love." Since I don't have kids and I don't think you'd love the same kind of thing Stella loves (like the frozen burrito she unearthed on the sidewalk from under 40 inches of snow last winter), I thought I'd ask the dude what I made that he was always happy to eat. He said, "that noodle-y soup." This is the one he meant.

Spicy Shrimp and Bok Choy Noodle Bowl
Rachael Ray, with my notes

3 T vegetable oil (or, you know, enough)
2 t crushed red pepper (usually I'm a spice slinger, but I always measure this because this is exactly the right amount)
4 cloves garlic (or just two)
two inches ginger root**, peeled and cut into matchsticks (grated on fine setting, no peeling)
1/2 lb shiitake mushrooms, sliced
1 medium bok choy, trimmed and cut into 3 ince pieces then cut in sticks lengthwise (or just sliced)
quart of chicken broth
1 bottle clam juice
1.5 lbs shrimp (I just go with 1 lb and cut them in half before cooking)
1/2 lb vermicelli (I use these fresh noodles, and I wouldn't use anything else)
4 scallions (again, she goes all crazy with the slicing directions, just cut them)

Heat a medium soup pot over medium high heat. Add oil and the next five ingredients (through bok choy), stir. Add broth and juice. Cover, and bring to a boil. Once the soup boils, add the shrimp and noodles. Cook for three minutes. Add the scallions, cook for two minutes. Remove from heat, and let stand for 5 minutes.

I'd say, "even the dude will eat it," but he eats everything...except polenta and couscous.

* Let's hope the red bok choy doesn't turn the soup dishwater grey like the red mustard greens did to that poor "greens and beans" soup I made last week.
** You're storing it in the freezer, right? Because it makes this step easier

Hot Dog!

This isn't about Stella. Though on some of our warmer days I do hold out a stick, which she will grab with her mouth, and I'll say to the dude, "look, hot dog on a stick!" We crack ourselves up around here. (And for the record, that dog's called Sadie.)

This is about the food. Hot dogs are my favorite summer food. It hasn't always been so; for many years I favored the burger. In the past few years, I have come to believe hot dogs may be the perfect summer food. (Okay, lobster is the perfect summer food, but hot dogs do in a pinch.) Maybe it's because I discovered potato rolls. Though, as a New Englander, I do wish they were top split.

If you ate a hot dog every other day between Memorial Day and Labor Day--and why wouldn't you?--oh wait, will you get bored of slathering your dog in your favorite condiment? Then you would need 50 hot dog recipes to get through summer.

I've been getting Food Network Magazine and each issue includes a pull-out booklet containing fifty (50) recipes on a theme, like 50 pizza recipes or 50 hamburgers. Where is the love for the hot dog? Right here, bitches.

1. Fried dogs: Score your dogs. Melt some butter in a frying pan, fry up your dogs for 8 minutes or so. With three minutes remaining, add your top split bun to the buttery pan. Grill* the bun on both sides. You could put condiments on this, but then you couldn't taste the butter.
2. Beer Wholesaler's Daughter: bring a (good) beer or two to the boil in a medium sauce pot. Boil your scored dogs for 5-6 minutes. Serve in a top-split roll with (American) piccalilli (your beer wholesaler's daughter is from New England).
3. You probably don't need a recipe to grill a dog, but Bobby Flay has one, with homemade pickle relish.
4. He grills a Nacho Dog too.
5. His Texas dog includes coleslaw and barbecue sauce.
6. Bobby also brings you the New York Dog.
7. Rachael Ray's Chicago Dog Salad is a favorite around here for the speed and ease of prep. It's a Chicago dog without the bun. Very flavorful.
8. Of course, you could take Chicago Dog Salad, leave the dogs whole and stick it all in a bun.
9. Or you could use Martha Stewart's recipe for a Chicago Dog.
10. Or you could go to this website dedicated to the art of the perfect Chicago dog.
11. Rachael Ray's Devilish Chili Dog recipe is not as spicy as the name suggests. We first became addicted to these when we were living with my cousin.
12. Here's a Ray we haven't tried, Mac and Cheese Dog Casserole. Though I did once slice hot dogs into my mothers fancy-pants mac and cheese recipe when I lived in New York because my boyfriend at the time thought you needed "protein" in mac and cheese. Silly.
13. Rachael Ray's Chili Dog Bacon Cheeseburgers. The dude doesn't like most of Rachael's burger recipes. They do tend to be epic. I sneaked this one on the table and he loved it, even though it sounds excessive. I mean, hot dog and hamburger? Yes, please! (If it seems like Rachael is over represented, I will cop to using her 365 cookbook almost daily. But not the burger recipes.)
14. Paula Deen makes her a chili dog.
15. And Tyler Florence knows a good thing about chili dogs too.
16. I'm Too Tired to Make Dinner: Open a can of baked beans and put them in a saucepan. Slice your hot dogs (or not if you're that tired) into the beans. Heat until edible. Serve with rinsed cherry tomatoes and B&M brown bread, if available, toasted or grilled and spread with butter.
17. Crescent Cheese Dogs. Another one from my childhood. But not as good as I remember.
18. Pigs in a Kimono. A more sophisticated version of the crescent dog, from the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (NHDSC).
19. Hoisin Glazed Dogs. We're looking forward to this one this summer. (NHDSC)
20. If you make sausage with peppers and onions, why not use caramelized onions and peppers on a regular dog?
21. Hot dog + corn relish. Mmmm. Corn relish.
22. Hot dog + onion relish. Mmmm. Onion relish. My favorite Vidalia onion relish is available here.
23. Dick's dog. My dad always puts celery salt on his dogs. You don't have to call it "Dick's dog" if that thought freaks you out. And it does me.
24. Hot dog + jalapeño + cole slaw. Heat it up and cool it down!
25. Pizza dog= hot dog + marinara + shredded mozzarella.
26. Pizza supreme dog = hot dog + marinara + shredded mozzarella + green peppers + onions + black olives + pepperoni
27. Some suggestions from Pinks, Los Angeles hot dog purveyors to the stars: Bacon Burrito Dog (Big flour tortilla wrapped around two hot dogs, cheese, bacon, chili, and onions.)
28. The Today Show Dog (two hot dogs in one bun, mustard, onions, chili, cheese, and guacamole)
29. The Hollywood Walk of Fame Dog (coleslaw and chopped tomatoes)
30. Martha Stewart Dog (relish, onions, bacon, chopped tomatoes, sauerkraut, and sour cream)
31. Lord of the Rings Dog (barbecue sauce and onion rings)
32. New York Dog with spicy red onions (my personal favorite, well, tied with LotR)
33. Mushroom Swiss Dog (grilled mushrooms, Swiss, and mayo)
34. And speaking of mayonnaise, a Flo's dog requires mayo, a steamed dog, and Flo's relish (though you could probably substitute Branston pickle; Flo's has more onion and is better)
35. And speaking of Martha Stewart (#30), she'll show you how to make Worms in Dirt.
36. Or a Ditch Dog, which unites macaroni and cheese with a hot dog on a bun.
37. Or make a baked corn dog.
38. Corn Dog Muffins, now that's an idea, though not Martha's.
39. Monte Cristo hot dog. You know we have a bumper crop of strawberry jam around these parts.
40. Rhode Islanders have a hot dog style. Who knew?
41. And Guadalajara (which should probably be under Pinks)
42. Baltimoreans like to wrap their dogs in bologna, go figure.
43. You can approximate a Hawaiian dog--from Hanks Haute Dogs--with pineapple relish, passion fruit mustard, and sweet Maui onions.
44. Tucson's Sonoran pairs the humble hot dog with bacon, mayo, mustard, ketchup, pinto beans, cheese, chopped tomatoes, chopped onions, jalapeños, and jalapeño salsa, on a bolillo.
45. Venezuelan Dog, onion, cabbage, and potato chips. Interesting. Maybe save that for the end of the summer...when I'm feeling adventurous.
46. Colombian Hot Dogs start with a boiled dog then top it with cole slaw, pineapple sauce, ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard and potato chips. I bet these sweet Hawaiian onion chips would work nicely. You can see the geographic relationship between these South American countries in their approach to hot dogs.
47. All these examples with cole slaw on hot dogs, has me thinking why not potato salad? The potato and egg salad at my local Superfresh would be awesome. (It's like deviled egg potato salad.)
48. Homewrecker. Start by deep frying a one pound all beef wiener. Place it in a bun. Add a few sliced pickled jalapeños. Top with Habanero sauce (you might have to watch the video--link plays with sound--to decipher that). Top with cole slaw, lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese. (Not sure but there may be chili on that too.) Or you could just go to West Virginia to get one. Or they'll send one to you.
49. Big Daddy used to cook at one of my former places of employment, now you can make his stuffed dogs.
50. And, especially for our friend Spinster Stitcher, Po Dogs in Seattle offers the Morning Glory Dog, a steamed-then-fried dog topped with scrambled eggs, Tillamook Cheddar, and pepper bacon. Check out their menu for more crazy suggestions.

In researching this post, I came across this eye-popping group of wackadoo hot dogs at Women's Day. The dude wants to try Le Pogo et Frites and Chinese Hot Dogs. And maybe we will.

Tonight on Food Network, Bobby Flay's Throwdown features hot dogs.

And you? How do you eat a hot dog?

* In American English, grilling can mean griddling--or cooking on a plancha--(as in grilled cheese) in addition to cooking over coals in a Weber.

Missing Recipe

In my review of the JCS Ornament Issue, I mentioned two missing recipes. Well, I said there were two but only gave you one example because my magazine was in the recycling. The second recipe is Imaginating's Candy Cane Cookies. Judy from Imaginating says the missing stuff (like the alphabet chart for her ornie) is supposed to be on the JCS website, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Oh, they got the kits up there soon enough. But go ahead and click on the survey. Uh-huh. Out of date. As usual.

You can find the cookies here.

When Life Gives You Kohlrabi

fuck the kohlrabi and bail.
Sorry, I loved Paul Rudd's character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I'm so easily amused.

When life gives you kohlrabi, get out the parmesan cheese!

So, you know how ingredient lists aren't copyright-able. This was a cookbook recipe, but I read the amounts incorrectly. So now it's my recipe (especially since I revised the directions). You may want to use less parmesan. Like a third less. But I wouldn't. I didn't.

3 kohlrabi
2 T butter
3/4 c parmesan cheese

Grate the kohlrabi coarsely. Grate the parmesan finely. Heat the butter over medium heat. Cook the grated kohlrabi in the butter for about 8 minutes. Sprinkle on the cheese, cooking until it melts. Season with salt and pepper. This is what it will look like.

Yum! Kohlrabi has a nutty flavor that marries well with the parmesan. And eating cruciferous vegetables helps prevent cancer! (Especially when you eat crap all day.)

---

Today is the dude's 40th birthday. Because of his craptastic summer schedule (he is busy busy busy at work), we won't be taking his 40th birthday trip until October. Tonight we were going to have veggie curry, but I bought some grass fed filets at the farmer's market and I think we can roast some potatoes and steam some sugar snap peas for a delightful evening repast. You'll forgive me if I spend my time paying attention to him tonight.

When Life Gives You Broccoli

...realize that broccoli casserole is too heavy to eat in the summer. Then contemplate how it is virtually the same recipe as your mother's macaroni and cheese. Decide mac and cheese can be eaten any time of year. Contemplate the CSA broccoli in the vegetable bin and, eureka, combine the two recipes!

3/4 pound of elbow macaroni

a head of broccoli

1/4 c butter

1/4 c flour

2 c warm milk

1 lb white cheddar, diced (orange cheddar is unnatural, don't use it.)

two slices of bread

butter

Set the oven to 375. Boil the macaroni to just shy of cooked. It will soften when you bake it. Then boil or steam the broccoli. Using a blender, pulverize the broccoli. Some chunks of stem will remain, but you mostly want broccoli mush because you really don't like eating flowers, do you?

Melt the butter. Brown the flour in the butter, stirring frequently. Slowly whisk in the warm milk. When the sauce begins to thicken, stir in a handful of cheese at a time. Once all the cheese is melted, remove the sauce from the heat.

Butter a casserole dish. Add the broccoli and macaroni. Stir to combine. Slowly add the cheese sauce. You won't need it all. You want the mixture pretty wet, but not soaking. Save the extra cheese for baked potatoes. Mmmmm. Butter the bread. Cut into 1" sqares. Sprinkle over the mac and cheese. You really want to do this because the bread will soak up oil from the cheese and it will be very very yummy. Bake at 375 for 30 minutes.

Photo courtesy of Wikicommons.

---

I am trotting out some of the recipes we've been using with the CSA vegetables for two reasons. The first reason is, for some of these veg, we're having to do full scale research to figure out how to prepare them. It's like I'm getting my PhD in vegetables. We are eating some crazy ass veggies. Like pod radishes. Did you even know about pod radishes? I sure as hell didn't. We had Hawaiian lettuce, anuenue, last night. Which I highly recommend to people who like iceberg's crunch but not its lack of flavor. The second reason is that I have thrown out my rotation in favor of secret traveling projects by day. I haven't been stitching by night. Lately, I've become obsessed with these stupid Jane Austen mysteries. It's embarrassing. But not so embarrassing that I'm not reading them in public... Oh, and there's this whole food theme for the nablopomo this month.

Anyway, enjoy the veg. I'll get back to stitching Edgar's RR and showing snaps of my work soon.

When Life Gives You Swiss Chard

make curry!

1 bunch Swiss Chard, spinach, Han Tsai Tai etc.
1 T butter
2 chopped shallots (or a small onion)
1 T minced ginger
pinch red pepper flakes
15 oz can red kidney beans
15 oz can tomato sauce
palmful curry powder
1/2 can coconut milk

Boil the greens until tender (about 7 minutes). Drain and rinse with cold water.

Heat the butter over medium high heat, cook the shallots until lightly browned. Stir in ginger, and season with red pepper. Mix in greens, kidney beans, tomato sauce, and curry powder. Stir in the coconut milk, and continue cooking until heated through.

The sauce very closely replicates the sauce from our favorite mushroom dish at Chandni in Santa Monica. So I think you could change this up by skipping the greens and doubling the butter so that after you cook the shallots you could brown a ton of mushrooms, let's say, a pound. Then everything else the same. No, skip the beans. So no beans and no greens. It'll be delish.

Oh, Fudge

The weather, though not as severe as expected, forced Sissy to postpone our night out. This works out well for us since we are heading to KC to eat barbecue tomorrow (and I'll get to meet Jacque--if all works out with babysitting). We're leaving first thing in the morning--actually, even before first thing. So I don't have Sissy's analysis of the fudge, but the dude and my boss have both raved about memere's recipe. I think you can tell from the above comparison shot that her recipe (on the right, the chocolate) is drier. I can't describe the texture, almost gritty, soft and yet hard.

Her recipe:
1 can evaporated milk
1 lb brown sugar
1 lb confectioner's sugar
piece of butter, size of an egg yellow
2 1/2 heaping t Hershey cocoa
2 1/2 heaping t of marshmallow
3/4 cup walnuts
Put milk, sugar, and butter in a deep pan. Stir continuously until you can drop a bit into cold water and it's kind of caramel-ly in about 1/2 hour. Keep stirring. Then put in marshmallow, stir, put in nuts, stir. Pour into butter greased pan.

Here's my interpretation: butter, 1 T; about 4 teaspoons of cocoa; and I used marshmallow fluff for the marshmallow because this isn't the kind of fudge that has marshmallow chunks in it. I put the pan on medium heat because who knows what it is supposed to be. At about 20 minutes, there was a definite change in how it felt to stir it and lo, and behold, when I dropped some into cold water it didn't just seem "caramel-ly," it tasted just like caramel. I put the cocoa in when I put in the marshmallow, because it doesn't say when to add that. (I love that kind of recipe the best!) I probably should have taken it all off the heat at that point, and with future attempts I probably will. You should probably switch to a whisk when you put in the fluff because it's a lot of work to get the lumpy marshmallow incorporated with a wooden spoon. I think it was smart to use a glass pan, but grease it within an inch of its life because this stuff is hard to get out of the pan!

The recipe on the left, came from my friend, DD. You'll have to ask her.

February 22

Sissy's birthday is Friday. Friday. How did it get to be late February? I am no closer to finishing the Amy Butler Weekender Travel Bag than I was before Christmas. We're having dinner in the city with her on Friday, so I have to bring her present to work with me that day. I have three nights. What can I make in three nights? I think I have an idea. I just hope someone has the recipe...

Okay, I just wrote to my great aunt to see if she has memere's (my great-grandmother) fudge recipe. That stuff was gritty with sugar, but Sissy's favorite candy is circus peanuts... Memere made mean fudge and even better brownies. She called all the great grandchildren "brownie" or "cookie." I always thought she just didn't know our names. I may have been right: she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1987 or so. In the 1970s she drove a pristine forest green bug with white leather interior. Yes, I said pristine and white in the same sentence. This is the same woman who helped my grandmother with her cleaning every week for as long as I can remember. She ironed everything: sheets, underwear, money... Another thing I remember about her was how she used to draw on an upper lip with orange lipstick. I photographed her 75th birthday party with my brand new black and white polaroid camera. (I'm so old.) She'd have been 108 this month and I haven't thought about her in a very long time. Thanks.

If I find the recipe, I'll happily share.

Popping Up No Shadow

Groundhog day is the anniversary of when the dude and I started dating. He says that since we're married now, we only have one real anniversary. (Which is a lie, since we got married once for the INS and once for show--though we only celebrate the "show" date.) It's been 15 years. I can't imagine having done anything for 15 years, but there you go...

Tomorrow, I am off to Cathy's to stitch. I'm bringing Carmelitas. Here's the recipe so you can make your own and pretend you're stitching with us.

1 cup flour
1 cup oats
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
3/4 cup melted butter
1 cup chocolate chips
3/4 cup caramel topping
3 T flour

Mix first 6 ingredients together. Pat 3/4 of mix into bottom of 8X8 pan. Bake at 350 until golden brown (about 20 minutes).

Spread chips over baked mixture. Mix the flour and caramel together until smooth and pour to cover chocolate, making sure to not to let the caramel touch the side of the pan. (It will burn.) Crumble the remaining dough over the top. Bake until golden brown (about 20 minutes).